


After

by WeAreStarStuff



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Non-graphic implication of finding a corpse, Soft Apocalypse, have I been watching too much Adventure time?, like the worst is over they’re just living with it., plus mutants!, there’s still pockets of humanity though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28052943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreStarStuff/pseuds/WeAreStarStuff
Summary: On a supply run after the apocalypse, Aziraphale runs into a surprising surprising child with snakelike features.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	After

Crowley still had his Bentley for traversing this brave new world, but these days Aziraphale had found himself taken with his motorbike. Perhaps it was a remnant of his time possessing Madam Tracy and their scooter ride to the end of the world. Perhaps not.

But he did know that after finding the blue filthy wreck and helping Crowley fix her up they’d realized he used the old girl more than Crowley did. So Crowley had thrown his hands up and declared her his. Though considering how he’d smiled, Aziraphale suspected this to be the point. 

These days Crowley had a lot of time for patching up a lot of vehicles. One more or one less didn’t hurt him. 

Besides he could have all the cars and bikes he wanted. It’s not there were any humans left who knew how to operate them after all. 

He shuddered as the green countryside flew past him. Such a morbid thought for such a lovely afternoon. 

He wasn’t ready to go home so he decided to stop for a while. 

He’d found himself in the lush overgrown fields of some farm. He could see a house in the distance. The plants looked like they hadn’t been tended in years. Some had shrivelled up and others were overgrown. Despite this, the house looked in good condition. Perhaps after picking some vegetables for dinner he could take a look around. Perhaps the former inhabitants might have some books he could appropriate. And on the off chance that there were people so far from any human settlements, he should cast a blessing in exchange for taking their produce. 

****

When the Angel had filled his bag full of herbs and vegetables, he strode on up to the house. 

The house was remarkably well preserved considering it probably hadn’t seen regular inhabitants in decades. It was also a great mess. Wood and whittling tools were strewn about all over the place. 

Aziraphale flipped a light switch and the long-dead emergency generator whirred to life and illuminated the sitting room. He gasped. It was like walking back in time! The overstuffed armchairs, the little wooden tables, even a television! He hadn’t seen one of those in ages! 

He knelt by the telly and picked up a little black box that Crowley used to call a cassette. He popped it into the slot under the television and the screen flickered to life.

It was a family. The last family to live here maybe? They were all wearing horrible jumpers and exchanging gifts. A Christmas dinner according to the time stamp. The year was there too but he’d lost count so long ago that such a thing was ultimately irrelevant. 

He got up and moved towards the kitchen. The table was covered in papers. He picked one up. It was covered in sloppy drawings in colourful pens. Had a child lived here? He didn't see any play structures outside. And the family in the films looked too old for the crude drawings. 

Something shuffled behind him. 

It looked like there was indeed a child here. 

He looked to be no more than two. Though he was so heartbreakingly _small_ he could have been younger. He had messy honey blonde curls and soft round cheeks and most eye-catching of all were a pair of green eyes with vertical pupils. _Snake eyes._

He’d seen a wide variety of mutations since, well, _since._ But this was the first time he’d seen a snake mutation. He couldn’t wait to tell Crowley. 

He pulled out his camera, (a once smartphone that had found a new purpose in life) This proved to be a stupid move because when the flash went off the boy gave a loud hiss and sank his fangs into the angel’s arm. 

It was quite fortuitous that Aziraphale had a remarkable tolerance to demon venom (Demon venom! He absolutely couldn’t wait to tell Crowley. He’d suspected the humans had been meddling. And this could be proof!). He didn’t even get any hallucinations as he did with Crowley’s. A little disappointing in the poisoning department, if he was completely honest. But he should go easier on him, he was only a child after all. And the bite had left a pretty large and bloody wound, so, points for that, he supposed. 

He scraped his tongue against his teeth. The venom may not have been harmful to him but it still left a tingly feeling on his tongue. And a nasty aftertaste to boot. 

The child looked on the verge of tears, so he held up the injured arm and started making shushing sounds to placate the boy. His gash was already starting to knit itself back together. 

The toddler grabbed his arm and kissed better with a soft “boo-boo” 

“Yes, that’s right.” He kept his voice as soft and soothing as possible, “just a little boo-boo. I’ll be alright. But you really should be more careful.” He scolded. 

Aziraphale got off the ground with a pained groan. “Let’s find your parents, little one.” 

The child eventually let go and wobbled down the hallway and into a bedroom. Aziraphale followed. 

There was a still figure on the bed and Aziraphale felt bile rise in his throat. He finished the handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed daintily at his mouth. 

Okay, so finding parents was not an option. 

★彡

He stumbled back to his motorbike, feeling woozy. He’d used quite a bit of miracles tonight, and there was no heaven or Hell to draw power from these days (the two of them had long since figured out how to replenish their stores with food and sleep instead). 

  
  


He made sure the child was strapped in tightly to his chest and took off west.

He just hoped Crowley wouldn’t mind setting one more setting for dinner tonight. 

☆彡

“Alright, you freeloaders. Time to go home!” Crowley sprang up the chair he had been lounging in. 

He was surrounded by a small throng of children. 

“Aw,” whined Tesco, a boy with antlers like a deer fawn, “but you haven’t told us the story of how the snake found his friend and stopped the war yet!”

“And what about the sword?!” Piped up his twin sister, Lucozade. 

What?

“what does any of this have to with the sword on the wall in the kitchen?!”

“Oh! It just makes great shawarma.” _That’s right. Deflect. Don’t think about Aziraphale blank-eyed above you with a flaming fuck off sword. Just don’t._

He managed to usher the kids out of the cottage so fast he might as well have bodily thrown them out the door. The kids made threats of visiting him tomorrow and he waved them off. 

He heaved a sigh of relief. 

It was good that the Angel was out grocery shopping or the bite-sized little urchins would have never left.

He heard Aziraphale shuffle gracelessly through the front door. Whatever he bagged must have been heavy. 

“Welcome home Angel!” He called from the kitchen. “Any luck out there?” 

“As a matter of fact, yes. I found an entire farm! They even had oranges! You know how I missed oranges.” He could hear the pride in his voice even from the hallway. Crowley tried not to let his smile take over his whole face. Adorable. 

He poured a couple of glasses of wine. His angel would no doubt need the tannins. 

“But that’s not all I found!” Aziraphale had by this time made his way into the kitchen where he was putting the finishing touches on dinner. 

Crowley’s jaw dropped. Was his angel wearing a papoose?! (In tartan no less!) It took him a minute to get over the ridiculousness of the sight and remembered that papooses carried headaches. Plus this headache looked filthy. 

“Angel,” he said wearily, “what is that?”

“You of all people should know what a human infant is. After all, we’ve shepherded more than a few of them to safety over the years.” The angel huffed. 

“ _Why do you have one?!”_ He hissed. 

“Well, I was hardly going to leave the poor dear all alone. Besides, look!”

He removed the child from the world’s ugliest papoose to give Crowley a better look at it. 

Its tiny eyes opened and he was pretty sure he felt his heart crack in two. Snake eyes. He’d seen plenty of mutants but this was the first time he’d seen a snake child. 

He grabbed the kid out of Aziraphale’s hands. 

The kid nervously scented the air with his tiny forked tongue. Crowley did the same. The child squealed in delight.   
  


“Where were his parents?” Crowley asked. He could see him getting way too attached. Better to put some separation between them. 

Aziraphale winced. “No longer around. It looked like they hadn’t been for a while, either.” 

”Right, we better give the little guy a bath. No telling the last time had one of those. And it’ll be a while before we can find a human settlement to take him in.”

Aziraphale smiled and waved the two of them off. 

☆彡

The child was nice and clean now and dressed in a soft red onesie for bed. Crowley had been delighted to discover that the black markings he’d thought were smudges of dirt were little smatterings of black scales. And he’d also found a pair of little horns when he washed his hair. 

He laid the handsome little man down in his bed and stayed with him until he fell asleep. 

Crowley walked back into the kitchen where Aziraphale was already helping himself to the vegetable soup he’d made. 

”Well, I put him down. Poor kid’s had a rough day. He'll probably be out for a while. We should think about a name for him.”

Aziraphale considered this. ”How about Luke?”

”I am not naming him _Luke.”_

”I thought that the two of you were close.”

”Angel we couldn't stand each other. Besides, he was a bit of a lush. Don't deny it. So maybe not the best name for a baby.”

”And I suppose you would name him something like Apep?” 

”How about Snake?Short for Snacob?”

”We are _not_ naming him that.” 

”Well I would like to see you do better!” 

”I’m thinking about it. Don't rush me.”

Unfortunately for Aziraphale, he would think about this for the next two years, and by the time said he said _How_ _about Oliver?_ Two years had passed and Crowley had already started calling him Snakey Jakey. 

He found that he didn’t mind though. The extended stay or the name. 

**Author's Note:**

> Awesome art by [Birbteef](https://mobile.twitter.com/birbteef?s=11%E2%80%9Drel=) On twitter!


End file.
